Sabine Dahrendorf and Josep Sanou. The Secret of Jellyfish

The creature that emerges from the water is a reflection that little by little becomes materialised: It is an image before it become a being, a desire before it becomes an image.
(G. Bachelard: Water and Dreams)

Dance event for four dancers and one actor
By Sabine Dahrendorf and Josep Sanou

Five dancers and one actor perform at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in a piece based on the quest for choreographic processes, which in turn researches into the possibility of engaging in a reading-in-movement of Perejaume’s poetical work, specifically of his book Pagèsiques.

Behind El Secret de les Meduses (The Secret of Jellyfish) lie choreographer Sabine Dahrendorf, co-founder with Alfonso Ordóñez of the legendary company Danat, and composer and plastic artist Josep Sanou.

All the choreographic sequences have been created especially for the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, thereby establishing an express dialogue with its unique spaces.
The danced images constitute a kaleidoscopic tissue in motion that generates the feeling of dissipation, between perceiving and imagining.
The dance, the sound space and the voice transform everything into rhythm, into pulsation and vibration, into an echo, that is multiplied by the reflecting surfaces.

Multiple layers of perception emerge to confront these gazes and perspectives. And it seems that we become bigger or smaller, depending on how far we are from the walls or corners. Like that feeling of astonishment when we perceive the reflection of G. Kolbe’s sculpture Der Morgen (Dawn) in the water, which by virtue of its particular dimensions establishes a different harmony in the blurred reflection moved by the echo of a dance, which decomposes the smooth surface of the water and prolongs the gesture in countless waves.
Our project revolves around that paradox between clarity and covertness. Between when you feel you are in the right and when you are not.

Les Meduses was first performed in September 2014 at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, having been created specially for its unique spaces, and subsequently continued on an itinerary to the 2015 Sismògraf festival and to the 2015 Barcelona Grec festival, eventually opening the 2015/2016 season at the Laboratorio de las Artes in Valladolid. The particularities of each setting engendered a different adaptation of Les Meduses. This performance returned to the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion on May 23, 24, 25 and 26 2016, having transformed all the experiences accumulated on the way into an entirely new version.